Abstract
In Turkey, vitamin D deficiency has been seen in children as well as in their mothers. We assessed the vitamin D status of 83 infants and their mothers, categorized into four groups according to season and mothers' clothing style. We measured serum levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D, calcium, inorganic phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase in each mother-infant pair. In the summer, the rate of vitamin D deficiency was higher in mothers who wore clothing that covered nearly all of the body (55%) than in mothers whose clothing covered less of the body (13.6%) (p=0.016). In the winter, nearly half of both groups of mothers had vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, and there were no significant differences based on their clothing style (p>0.05). In all groups of infants, vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency rates were found to be very low. It seems that 400 IU/daily vitamin D intake is adequate for infants in Turkey; for mothers, we propose vitamin D supplementation during the pregnancy and lactation period.
Copyright and license
Copyright © 2014 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.